


The Decline and Fall of the Alternian Intergalactic Empire

by RandomWriterDude



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), Angst, Long, M/M, Multi, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-04-30 21:50:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomWriterDude/pseuds/RandomWriterDude
Summary: "In dire straits such as these, you might find yourself asking: "What can a bunch of dirty, disheveled urchins and revolutionaries do against something like the Alternian Empire? They outnumber us, like, 1 to 1000, not to mention we're all basically pansy idealists in outrageously shitty jumpsuits." And to those people I ask- have you ever seen a movie called Death Wish 3?"Earth's boned. They're using the human race as menial labor, they're stealing our resources, and worst of all, they took Twinkies off the shelves. Who better to stop them than a bunch of teenagers who didn't really have a choice and may or may not be dedicated to the cause?Updates weekly, hopefully.





	1. An Introduction

It’s hard to see the value of a planetarium in a situation like this, which is the real goddamn shame. In any normal situation, there would be millions ready to die on a hill arguing the educational worth these things have. There would be debates on Twitter, hot takes, a mass uprising of passionate individuals that were ready to defend the bastions of learning that are proudly named: planetariums. They’d be on Capitol Hill; “We want our shitty models of planets!” They would scream, holding signs with equally shitty writing on them. “We want our historical artifacts that  _ came from outer space!  _ How can you not find that bitchin’!” 

They’d scream their asses off about their weird space museums, and they’d be right to, because shit that came back from outer space is so bitchin’, dude. Space artifacts are the definition of bitchin’. I think when you crack open your dictionaries and look for the word “bitching”, all you’ll find is a picture of some chill astronauts in the Gemini pod, slamming some Monsters back and generally being cool. I mean, like, it’s retro tech  _ and _ rocket propulsion, bro! Wicked! If Congress ever tried to touch them, I bet my bottom dollar the almighty Bro Gods would come down and smite them, declaring:

“Thy actions have, like, totally violated the rights of your fellow man, yo. You just gonna double cross your astronautical brethren like that bro? Not cool. You’re being waay two-faced right now. Gotta cut you off man, sorry, bro.” And then they’d turn all of Congress into snakes or something. Cue rejoicing.

Unfortunately, that’s not really possible anymore. Not because the Bro Gods don’t exist, they definitely do, watching over us with their radical ways always, but more because Capitol Hill is a pile of rubble now and budget cuts aren’t the reason no one cares about the planetariums anymore, it’s the whole influx of alien invaders thing.

The fact they’re still here is nice though, Janitor #3541-C thought as he combed through the rubble that once was the Adler Planetarium. The worst this thing got were some broken windows and mild vandalism. He guessed the looters didn’t see anything of value, and the benevolent overlords that ran his life didn’t see the danger in bad planetary models and old, disconnected space tech. Hah, the fools. They’ll regret it when the janitor organized his resistance here, taking down the intergalactic tyrants and sending them packing back to whatever bunghole they came from!

Or, y’know, he’d just do his job, get his meal ticket, and go home because he’s a wimpy, 28 year old string bean of a man and aliens eat pieces of shit like him for breakfast. Whatever. The janitor stepped over a particularly messed up display that had fallen over into the aisle, not even bothering to try and clean any of the broken glass littering the floor. His task here was to just scare any vagrants off and lock the place up, really, it was the easiest job handed down all day. If the Bro Gods weren’t so obviously fake and made up in his head, he’d think they’d put in a good word for him.

The janitor started clearing floors, starting with the one he was on. With a distinctly plastic click, a flashlight beam illuminated the corridor. Flashlights were kinda necessary if you wanted to go anywhere nowadays; in the interest of conserving resources on Earth, there was an especially fun royal decree that ordered power to “non-essential” areas be cut off. That one didn’t sound especially awful right up until everyone realized that non-essential areas included their homes, along with basically everywhere else in the city. They cut the trains off. How much of a dick do you have to be to cut the trains off? Trains literally increase productivity, but no, our fine empress decided that instead of letting them run, she’d just leave them sitting like sacks of trash on the CTA lines like it was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The janitor thought, and would adamantly tell you, that it was just for kicks, and it really pissed him off. It just goes to show how little her high and mightiness cares, you know? This is all a game to her. He wouldn’t be surprised if they just decided to wipe us all off the planet, to just- oh

On his scan of the first floor, he’d already encountered an obstacle. One of the doors to the big theater where they used to do shows was barricaded. It just didn’t budge when he turned the knob and pushed on the door. God, he was really just hoping that this could be a relaxing stroll through an abandoned planetarium, he hadn’t factored in actually having to do work. That changes the whole dynamic this work assignment was hinging on, and he did not like it. Maybe it would be easy to solve? The janitor gave the door a few solid whacks, figuring that might fix the problem. Of course, though, nothing. It wasn’t ever going to be that easy, was it? The janitor resorted to fumbling through his tool belt and getting this awful plasma cutter thing out that he hated using. It was so goddamn old, he was always worried that it was going to just break and burn off a finger. The thing sucked, and he only pulled it out when he really couldn’t get somewhere another way. Plus, the thing just stunk, literally. It was squishy and expelled this waste gas all the time. Why would you design something that smells awful as soon as you turn it on? Who needs something like that? Alien tech was a bitch to get used to.

Alas, he got through the door with all fingers intact. Eventually. It was an ordeal and he smelled like a bad public bathroom, but the door was open at the very least, so there's that. He stepped over the recently deceased door he had just cut off its hinges and headed into the theater, feeling- oh, god. Surprise number two.

Granted, they’d been torn down, but some very conspicuous banners were laying on the ground. It almost looked like they could belong to one of the extreme independence movements that tended to float around in the cities, and considering the fact there were cots and things just, lying around, abandoned… this was a bad sign. If he went and reported all of this rebel stuff now, he’d be sent home, teams of Imperial soldiers would flush this place out, but, most importantly, he’d lose his meal ticket for not doing all of his work, and fuck if he was going hungry because some rebellious assholes decided to set up shop here. After a cursory glance around with the flashlight to make sure there weren’t still squatters here, he headed out the back door, on a newly invigorated mission to make sure this place was clear.

With that goal in mind, he started investigating the second floor. He ducked into every room, checked every corner; he didn’t wanna miss some cranny an uppity rebel could crawl out of and wreck his week. He was in battle mode, scanning for danger. It was really easy to slip into battle mode right now too, these rebel groups were notoriously dangerous. They tended to either try and recruit you to the cause, or fuck you up so bad you can’t possibly remember where you were when it happened. He wasn’t sure if all of that was just propaganda or what, but it was enough to keep him on edge. He could see where that kind of secrecy might take hold, the fact was, they had to stay pretty secretive if they didn’t want to be picked up by her majesty’s assault divisions, and, well- he’d seen the executions on TV. These guys weren’t exactly known for their mercy. In fact, they pride in having no mercy at all! Decapitations, burnings, shit, sometimes they just rounded people up in pits and shot them, firing squad style. You know that scene in John Dies At The End, where it cuts to the cartoon massacre of the pit of people by the spiders? It’s kind of like that. Disgusting. Really, it’s the little guys who lose in situations like this, the janitor thought. The little guys like him.

Fortunately, picking a side in this fight wasn’t even hard. The janitor decided the day he saw the Imperial operation up close that he was going to be fine being subservient to citizens of the Empire. All of the dickweeds running around pretending that crap like “Western ideals” and “human rights” is going to drive these hardened military fuckers off haven’t seen the operation their running. This is just a Tuesday to them, dude, another check off the box. They’ve done the whole “planet enslaving” thing before, they just don’t care about things like morals. They see it as  _ weakness _ . They’re the worst case scenario aliens, and it scared the janitor witless when he first saw it. Hell, that’s why he’s fine being called the janitor. He has a name, of course, but do you really expect him to step out of line and start using it? Under the threat of death? A long life of dull work and being called “the janitor” is way better than being thrown into whatever death pit they have lined up for people who reject the names they’re given. That’s not the way he’s going to go out.

Having cleared another floor, the janitor headed back down, this time to a lower one. He guessed they had a floor below the one you come in on? The place was so dark and the signs were so fucked up, it was really hard to tell what exactly they were supposed to be called, so he just called it floor -1. The final floor. Sounds fine, right? Right? Shut up.

This floor had more of the rebel propaganda around, so he guessed he was on the right track. Really, these banners and pamphlets were so janky. Even in the dark, with a terrible, work-issue flashlight, he could see these things were gigantic hunks of terrible craftsmanship. They looked like they were done with old-timey printing presses, back in the Gutenberg Bible days. Couldn’t they get color printers? I hear newfangled colors like red and blue are really hip with the kids these days. It still sort of creeped him out, because, I don't know. It was dark in here, okay? He kept hearing noises, and even the slightest little thing made him jump and look behind him. He was pretty sure it was the place settling or whatever, but it creeped him out. He could’ve sworn someone knocked over a filing cabinet earlier.

Regardless of poor design choice, he followed the trail of breadcrumbs. Judging by the amount of drivel, he figured he might just be in the thick of it.

“Hello?” The janitor called out, trying to pull the classic trick of getting the urchins to respond before harshly booting them out into the hands of unfeeling military men. It worked in movies, sometimes. “Anyone around? I’m not gonna hurt you.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, he wasn’t; the genocidal aliens he works for will.

Unfortunately, it turns out what works in movies doesn’t actually work in real life. No dirty orphans just waiting to be delivered into the loving arms of a firing squad peeked around the corner, all that greeted him was a whole lot of silence. Which was something he was completely fine with. Better to be able to go back up there and tell his boss all that was in there was some old propaganda while he’s locking up then to have to wrangle with another human being, one who probably won’t be too happy about him being there. This way, he can just leave quietly, it perfect peace. He headed back to the stairwell, taking a deep breath before starting to climb again.

Of course, it’s right then a noise comes from behind him. A noise that sounded suspiciously like footsteps. Or maybe less like footsteps, but more like someone creeping up behind him? The janitor turned around one more time to call out.

The last thing he saw that day was some really blonde hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The janitor isn't dead, just knocked right the fuck out. Also, we'll start getting into adventures with the main characters soon, just, bare with me here. I felt like the setting needed some introducing. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments, this is my first time writing something like this.


	2. New Perspectives

Dave’s morning started with some lumbar pain and a crick and his neck. So, y’know, pretty shit.

Most of his mornings were like this though. The Liberty Front branch he’d joined only used these awful cots so they can move around quicker, and, dude, when I say awful cots, oh my god they were terrible. These are the kind of cots that make a man question what he stands for. The kind of cots that make you go, man, if I just walked away from all of this, I could get a solid double bed and sleep soundly every night. I am purposefully subjecting myself to all kinds of medical procedures down the line to correct the shit I’m doing now. I’m the one fucking up my health and future. I can just say no. Fortunately, Dave had the strength of character to get through it. He was just that kinda guy.

Plus, even as he crawls out of the cot bitching and moaning because its 4 AM and he’s not even supposed to be up yet, or that someone had woken him up being a dumbass, or just because he wasn’t able to sleep, a quick step outside can easily remind someone what they’re fighting for around here.

Nobody fucks with Earth and gets away with it. The only people who can even  _ think _ about fucking with Earth and getting out of it scott-free are the human race, and even we will put ourselves on thin fucking ice for it. We beat ourselves up about fucking with the Earth all the time, dude. The Lorax wasn’t even really a kids book; it was a full and legally binding admission of guilt, drafted when we looked at all the glaciers starting to melt and thought:

“God dammit, we killed the penguins.”

We, not unlike some schoolchildren who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, solemnly swore not to fuck with the Earth again. Then, as a little bonus, we reprimanded ourselves for doing it in the first place, writing “I will not fuck with the Earth” about one hundred times on the global chalkboard. You just don’t do it. So why, after all the hoopla about saving the damn world, do so many chucklefucks just sit idly by and let some alien mega-bitch make the Earth a shitty place to live again? Are we just going to let ourselves fall ass-backwards into feudalism again? We’re going to let some up-tight, uncool murder skanks slowly melt the ice caps? Seriously? As the famous economist and philosopher Adam Smith said in  _ Wealth of Nations _ , fuck that whole noise, yo.

Those were Dave’s thoughts on the matter. It’s not like it was that original of a thought; you stop any rando on the street and they’re going to tell you, oh, yeah, I think a bunch of insane trolls from outer space melting the ice caps is pretty wack. What they’re not going to do, though, is something about it. That was what made them special. They had the cojones to do something about it, to fight back, to stick it to the man. 

Or, he thought it was. It was kind of hard to feel like a big balled man on the front lines, facing danger and repelling the alien bastards trying to make us into human soup when you’re given bullshit busy work all the time. It actually felt like cleaning shit up and doing recovery missions was keeping him from the actual front lines, which was stupid. There are people getting hurt that he was more than ready to stand in for, and yet he’s sidelined again and again. It was starting to feel like he was the short kid on the basketball team, begging the coach to put him in and let him do something, but the coach is like, dude, you’re a fucking manlet, I can’t put you in. You’ll get pummeled.

Really, it was more bitching and moaning, though. He was sure once his lower back stopped yelling at him like he’d just been hit with a vicious RKO, he’d be fine, uh, burning files or whatever other benign bullshit he was put up to today. It was just his life.

He got off the cot and onto his feet, careful not to step on one of the other 4 people they shoved into this room. One benefit to the recent uptick in large abandoned buildings since the invasion was that it suddenly became easier to hide groups of people. For example, this old planetarium? Great for hiding people. It even has a basement you can shove people in so no snitch ass motherfuckers accidentally see a dude sleeping in here and tell the Imperials about it. (Well, maybe it’s not a basement. Maybe it’s just a floor under the ground floor? What do you even call that, floor -1? That sounds stupid, nevermind.) The fact that they could sleep in actual rooms now with insulation and, in rare cases, running water was a miracle. During the early days of the Liberty Front, they had to sleep in the woods, or in people’s homes. It was very risky; by putting them all in contact with so many people who might not be loyal to the cause, they were gambling with their lives. These days, they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to contacting civilians. The people they’re fighting for don’t always know that they’re fighting for them, so it’s easier to take them out of the equation than to deal with them. Dave hadn’t actually had to do it himself, but he’d thought about it. He imagined that when the time came, he’d man up and do what needed to be done. Hopefully with some stoic, badass look on his face that really screamed “necessary evil”.

Back to the task at hand, though. After navigating the sea of sleeping people and throwing on some clothes, Dave popped out into the hall from whatever room they’d designated Cot Room #3. It was about this time he realized shit was real busy real early. Usually, when dealing with a ragtag band of rebels such as this one, getting them all functioning on any given day is a Herculean task, but then the stupor cleared up and Dave realized he was just being a dumbass; they’re packing up.

Remember when I said those shitty cots were all about being able to pick up and move quickly? Well, yeah, this is what I meant. Dave’s branch of the Liberty Front needed to pick up and move often, and by often, I mean every few days. They’d gotten there on Saturday and now it was Tuesday, which meant, by golly, it was time to fuckin’ skedaddle. They’d all peel out on trucks under the cover of night and ride to a predetermined location, only to pack up and do it all again a few days later. Sometimes they stayed longer if something big was going down, but really, staying somewhere for a long time was risky, especially in urban areas. It was worse back home in Texas, where colonization was taking place. It could take a long time before you could find a place to settle down there, so you’d just be riding the roads, pissing in bottles, fighting off drones and assault squads. Dave’s brother did most of the fighting for Dave now that he was thinking about it, but still, the whole pissing in bottles thing has to suck.

Packing up meant that Dave needed to get ready quickly, though. He was not getting left behind with his pants around his ankles. Dave started moving down the hallway, passing people moving boxes, equipment, shitty cots. Everything they could was getting packed up and thrown onto the trucks. It was busier upstairs, which is where Dave was headed.

Up there, it was really easy to see the scale of this operation. The Chicago branch of the Liberty Front was the biggest in the midwest, and it felt like it when everyone was busy like this. Hundreds of people were working to put this well oiled machine into action, whether that involved loading trucks, keeping watch, working communications or rounding people up. It was noisy and freeform, and Dave thought it was really fucking cool because of it. Everyone had something to do, something that helped the operation run smoothly, even if it looked like organized chaos to an outside observer. You just had to be in the loop.

Dave needed to figure out what his role in this clusterfuck was. The Front had set up some theater as their base of operations, so through some fantastic powers of deduction on Dave’s part, he figured that the theater would be the best place to find his commanding officer and figure out what the fuck he was supposed to be doing. He called her his “commanding officer” because that’s what he was supposed to do, but she didn’t act like one. There were no drills or anything, no line-ups. This whole operation never functioned like an actual military, and there was no way it could. There were too many people who would never fight, and a whole lot of people still who would fight, but were there for different things, like making banners or propaganda. It functioned still, just way more loosely; perfectly exemplified by Dave’s idea of checking in with his CO being literally tracking her down and asking her what was up.

As Dave’s powerful intuition had told him, Sergeant Hayes was by some console in the theater, looking really swamped. What better time to bother someone then when they were overloaded trying to get a hundred-man strong operation running smoothly? Dave made his way across the room, passing scouts and radio operators and other important people on his trek. Really, the theater had been decked out. Floodlights and communications equipment ran off a portable generator they took with them. Gas was getting harder to come by, but once they ran out of gasoline, they would have bigger problems than not being able to run their fancy radios.

Once Dave made his way over to the other side of the room, he made an attempt to talk.

“Yo, Hayes,” He started, just sort of talking at a normal conversational volume while everyone else around him talked while he was talking. There was no way she was hearing him. “What am I supposed to be doing right now?”

“Good morning, Strider.” Sergeant Hayes’s voice cut through the noise much better than Dave’s. She was a woman who really knew how to project. It’s way easier to boss people around when you can yell and people understand what you’re yelling. 

Hayes looks also probably made the job easier. She seemed like a tough person, through and through. A real no-nonsense kinda chick. She was tall, her blonde hair tied up into a tight high ponytail. She towered over Dave, even. While Dave was an average guy, probably about 5’10 or something, she was like 6’3, toned, and ready to throw down at all times. Also, Dave found it funny that all of the people trying to talk to her stopped, looked at him, and glared like he’d just interrupted the most important conversation of their collective lives. “Sleep well?”

Dave sighed. “Man, you know how I sleep.” Sergeant Hayes flipped through a clipboard while he talked, hopefully to look for his assignment. “But, aside from the fact it feels like Satan danced a Scottish jig on my lower back, I’m pretty chill. Just need to know where I need to be.”

“Mm, that’s good” Hayes stopped fussing with the clipboard and looked at Dave. “Better get used to it, though; you’re staying behind on cleanup duty.” She said, before going back to her conversations.

Dave wasn’t really satisfied with that. Staying behind? What, were they just going to leave him there? What kind of bullshit was that? “I’m not sure I get the whole staying behind bit. Can you elaborate?”

Hayes looked just a little frustrated; she had a right to be, Dave was probably interrupting important business. She went on anyway. “Dave, it’s not that complicated. All cleanup duty is is camping out here for an extra day, cleaning up anything that looks important or can be tied back to us, and then lighting the building on fire at the end of the day. It’s easy. There’s a gas can and matches downstairs you’ll use to light the thing up, and a car will be by here to pick you up in the morning.”

Oh, okay, yeah, that breaks it all down. So he was just going to burn down the whole planetarium. That makes it nice and simple. Except it doesn’t, and it actually just sounds completely batshit crazy, and he doesn’t want to do it. He’s never seen one of the places he left go up in fucking flames before, and he’s been on a lot of cleanup duties. Is this a new thing? Who thought it would be a damn splendid idea to just become pyromaniacs all of the sudden? 

“Why are we burning this hunk of shit down?” Dave asked, a better question coming to mind right after he got the first one out. “What’s going on here that we would even need to burn down?”

Neither of those questions would get answered. Instead, things just got more tense. Dave was decidedly being kept out of the loop and it sucked. “Look, Strider,” Hayes started, sounding a little tee’d off. “It’s risk management. Just do your job.” And with that, she was apparently done with the conversation, apparently going to do something else.

With that rude exit, Dave was forced to find something to do with himself. He tried to find some pals of his to chill with until they were shipped out, but it seemed like everyone who wasn’t a real Important Guy was on the trucks already, so that plan was a bust. Seriously, he spent a solid ten minutes searching for John, or Rose, or someone, but they just weren’t there. Plan 1 was a designated back up plan for any situation Dave was in, and it was already a bust. Dammit. Next, he figured he’d just text them, but no one was responding. Makes tons of sense, actually, because they’re on fucking trucks packed in like sardines and sufficiently occupied. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he would just watch the trucks roll out if he was sticking behind. It was really the only thing he could do, and hey, it might be a pretty cool sight.

It was also kind of hard not to question some of the logic here. As far as he could tell, this place was just another, normal hideout. Why would they need to burn the entire thing down? Dave understood the whole “taking precautions” thing, but this seemed a little overkill. Also, what was up with him staying there alone? He’d been on cleanup before, but it was always with a group of people with a ride waiting outside for them to get done. Being left alone to handle the entire thing alone was kinda strange, Dave thought. Nothing was adding up here

So, he resigned himself to watching people leave instead of racking his brain with these tough question. It was a surprisingly sad sight. He watched as everyone packed up and left, driving into the rising sun. With every truck that left, the place got a little more quiet. It started to lose the bustling feeling after only a few departures, and after only about an hour, all the trucks had departed, everyone had left except for him. The planetarium had settled into a dreary kind of silence. It was sorta creepy, being alone in this big, abandoned building. Dave couldn’t shake this feeling that something was going to go down. But it was chill. He wrote it off as general anxiety about being alone on a mission; being all alone and doing something illegal always puts you on edge.

Dave headed back inside the planetarium and got to work cleaning everything up. Slowly. First, he took his time taking banners down, piling them up so they would burn easily. It was a huge hassle though; he had to find something to climb on any time he wanted to take one down, and there’s not a lot of stuff that isn’t nailed down in a planetarium. He even knocked one of the exhibits over into the main hall trying to get stuff down, where it just sorta sits now, blocking shit.

If that wasn’t enough, the rest of it took hours. The process of finding a banner, picking something up, and then moving that thing to the banner to tear it down was tedious enough, actually finding all of them? There were flags in straight-up dumb places. Like, for instance, there was one draped over a huge model sun he had to figure out how to climb up. Really, it looked sort of cool, but come the fuck on. It wasn’t like Dave had any climbing tools or anything; all he had with him was his standard issue pistol, a flashlight and his sword, which was downstairs with his stuff and not really useful for fucking scaling a big ass planet. 

Eventually he just gave up on the banners because of the time it was taking; there were tons of files and pamphlets that were probably more important to burn up anyway, why waste his time dragging a chair around and fumbling with signs like a tool? Instead of taking the rigorous route, he decided to pile up all the files and things in the back room. Unfortunately for Dave, that also involved finding all the papers in the building and moving them down to that back room, which was a process in and of itself. There were a lot of stray papers people left behind in this place, and you can’t hope that anything you leave behind won’t have names or locations on it that get people killed. You were forced to just pick up every manila folder and stray document you could find or suffer the consequences, which sucked extra hard. It was only after cleaning out both floors, hauling filing cabinets and boxes downstairs, and making sure that nothing important looking was just laying around that he feel good about moving downstairs and starting to light things up.

Unfortunately, right after he’d finished his sweep upstairs, the front doors opened up and someone walked in.

Wait, hold on. The front doors just opened and someone just walked in. Fuck, did he not lock the doors? Has he just been sitting here with his thumb up his ass while a raid was being set up? If he was caught doing this, what would happen to him? He didn’t exactly have plausible deniability here. “What were you doing burning all of these sensitive documents?” Oh, y’know. Nothing. “Why were you hanging out in a rebel base?” I just thought it would be cool. See, it just  _ sounded _ fake as fuck. This was such a bad situation.

Dave ducked down. There was good news in this huge mess. He might be within viewing range of the front door, but it was dark as hell in here. Dave had been relying on a flashlight to see anything, so it might be a little easier to slink around than it would be usually. Also, he was really close to the theater they’d been using as a command center earlier. If he could slip in there, he could lock some big metal doors and buy himself some time. Finally, it was just one dude as far as he could tell, and he didn't know what they were doing there. They might just leave after stepping in. Still, it’s probably better to assume the person was a troll or someone investigating the place then to go, oh, they’re probably harmless. Let’s just LET them wreck my shit six ways from Sunday. No, he had to take some action.

The first order of business was to put some immediate distance between him and the threat. Dave stayed close to the ground as he moved, slinking towards the theater. The ground was caked with debris which made staying quiet a task. He had to start and stop, ducking behind shit when he could and easing the door shut slowly when he did get to the theater. After that, he locked the doors tight, making sure they didn’t budge. Looks good. 

Now, with that done, he was free to make some bigger plans. Plans like hurrying up and lighting this joint up, because he did not want to have to deal with this any longer than he had to. Dave made his way down the stairs as carefully as he could, starting to miss the boring clean up already. At least when he was tearing down banners and hauling chairs around there was no chance he could get arrested. At worst, he might take a spill and twist and ankle or something, boo-hoo. Now there was real shit going down, and Dave wasn’t prepared to handle it. If he had known some dude was going to come waltzing in here in advance, he would’ve set up some Home Alone style traps, gone Macaulay Culkin on this guys ass. No Imperial pigs to report to when you’ve got a Nerf dart with a tack on the end in your nutsack. Pound me, bro.

As soon as he got downstairs, he started piling up files to burn in the room with the gas can. Mind you, he was leaving the small fry stuff on the ground like the trash it was. The pamphlets and flyers didn’t need to be thrown on some bonfire, and even if they did, Dave didn’t have the luxury of giving a shit. The guy upstairs could wander down here at any second and see him doing this, and then he’s boned. Put between a rock and a hard place. In a hairy situation. Hell, at one point during the process he knocked over a filing cabinet he was clearing out. Dave was so freaked out, he waited in the corner for what felt like an eternity with the lights off,  _ just in case _ the stranger heard. Dave was paranoid out of his mind doing this shit.

Finally, though, he managed to get everything piled up and ready to go. All he needed to do was burn it now. It would be a little awkward managing the gas can and the flashlight in one hand, but it was fine. He could cope. He just wanted this to be done so he could get out of here. He hoped the fire would flush the stranger out and be enough of a distraction that Dave could-

Footsteps on the stairwell. Dave stopped picking up the gas can, shut his light off and got close to the ground again. Fuck. He was officially near completely fucking boned. All he could hope now was that this guy just forgot to check this room, or that he was a complete goddamn idiot and Dave managed to take him down or something. Luckily, the guys next actions made Dave think the latter was true.

“Hello?” The nincompoop called out, literally ruining any idea Dave had that this guy might be some hardened threshecutioner or something. “Anyone around? I’m not gonna hurt you.” Oh, what a fucking lie. Even if this guy didn’t intend to hurt Dave, the genocidal aliens probably will. This dude just bought the karmic farm, he deserves whatever’s coming to him.

Dave slipped out from the room and crept up behind this dude, who was just waving his flashlight around all willy-nilly. Didn’t he know that was doing exactly jack and shit? If he was smart, he would do something reasonable, like look behind him. Unfortunately for this dumbass, he didn’t have the sense to do that, so Dave had the insane advantage of being undetected. He crept closer, and closer, basically waiting until he was in striking range and the stranger started to turn around to lurch forward and-

**_THWACK!_ **

The guy crumpled onto the stairwell nigh instantaneously. God, Dave forgot how much it hurt to punch someone like that. His knuckles absolutely hated him right now. He shook it off and turned his attention towards important matters, like figuring out just who this guy was.

It was pretty obvious from the way just called out like that, but Dave didn’t think this guy was military or anything. In fact, now that Dave had this guys flashlight on his crumpled, unconscious body, he was pretty sure it was just some working-class dude. A schlubby guy in a standard issue jumpsuit. Dave actually felt kinda bad for him. Sure, this blue-collar hero was probably going to turn Dave over to the Imperials if he’d been found, but can you imagine how much it must suck to just be doing your job and get jumped out of nowhere? He probably didn’t even know what happened. He wanted to pour one out for this guy, a real sacrifice for the cause.

Dave didn’t really have time for that, though, and getting his shit rocked wasn’t the last sacrifice this guy was going to have to make for the cause. One of these jumpsuits might be just what Dave needed to get out of the planetarium all discreet like, which is a big improvement over hoping the fire distracts enough people Dave gets away untouched. Before Dave did anything else, he stripped the guy down and put his clothes on. They were a little big on him, but it’s not like anyone is going to question him on it. They mass-produce these things, not everyone’s going to get their size.

He got to work on putting everything else into motion. He doused the files in gas, spread it all around the basement for good measure, and, out of some serious guilty conscience, he dragged the unconscious janitor guy upstairs and, hopefully, out of harm's way. Really, if he ever ran into this guy again, he was going to have to give him a hell of an apology. This guy was the real trooper.

With everything set up and ready to go, there was only one thing left to do: actually light the thing on fire. Dave stood on the stairwell with the matchbook in hand, making sure to keep himself a safe distance from the fire. He didn’t need all of his facial hair burned off and, y’know, there was always the risk all of this gas actually just explodes and finishes Dave off right there. Whew. With a quick strike of a match, a deep breath, and a gentle toss, the whole floor exploded into flames. A wave of heat hitting Dave right in the face, and the flames themselves draped everything in a brilliant orange light.

Haha, holy fuck was it going to be a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first real Dave chapter. Also, I hope you guys are into original characters because there's going to be a ton of them. They'll never play a major role in the story, (sadly, Sergeant Hayes never gets her own spin-off chapters) but they'll be there. They make the setting more believable, to me.
> 
> Also, the second update in a week! After this I'm going to go into shitty weekly update schedules, but I figured I should at least give you guys a proper chapter before disappearing into the ether. I hope you guys enjoy!


	3. bullshit meter.......... activated

Once Dave was actually out of the planetarium, he figured he’d be good to just, go. Sure, he knew he would have to sneak back over here somehow, but he figured he’d at least be good for the day. He didn’t know how much shit he still needed to go through.

Barriers had been put up sometime after the trucks left, blocking the area off. It looked like they might be starting construction on something? Dave couldn’t tell what they were constructing, though, and they were obviously just getting started. It was amazing how quickly they were able to set it all up. With that said, there still weren’t many people around, considering the speed of the operation. There were like, three guys standing around, and a few apparently doing… things? Dave couldn’t actually make out whatever the fuck they were doing. The point was, there was more than a couple and that was enough that it made Dave anxious. Also, it sort of seemed like there were trolls watching and making sure everyone was in their proper place, which freaked Dave out too. He didn’t need someone recognizing his jumpsuit of oppression and going, hm, I haven’t seen this guy around here before. If he got searched, he was screwed; he had a gun tucked into the waistband of these things for christ’s sake. It’s not like they were just going to let him go. Also, was there a name tag or something on this thing? Dave didn’t even think to check while he was putting it on, but if someone knew the guy who originally owned these things he was done for. Dave looked down at himself, checking his chest for and identifying name plates or anything and- augh, fuck.

There was one, but it was in Alternian. Dave didn’t know how to read that stuff. He probably needed to learn, gotta be able to communicate with the aliens if you want them to get their saggy asses off of your goddamn space rock, but dude, it just looked so weird. He was willing to believe learning Alternian wasn’t even that hard, but without any serious motivating factors Dave wasn’t going to dive into that pool. It was not worth the time. So, instead of reading the name plate and knowing what kind of name he was going to be responding to, Dave devised a new plan: keep his head down and hope nobody notices him.

Part of that new plan involved not standing around like a jackass, though, because right now he felt like everyone was looking at him and it was driving him up the wall. He started to get the fuck out of there. In a chill way, of course. Walking as naturally and chilly as humanly possible, he made his way from the front entrance of the planetarium and towards the exit to this place. Chill-ly.

It only took a few seconds to get over towards the barriers, but god does a few seconds seem long when you’re hopped up on all kinds of unhelpful things like adrenaline and fear. It seemed like he was pulling it off though. No one was stopping him, so it looked like it would be just a few more steps and he would be home free. Well, not really home free. He still had to think about what he would do for the rest of the day. Seriously, where was he supposed to wait for this car? Did anyone think this mission through?

A heavily accented voice stopped Dave in his tracks just before he could get out of there, because of course it did. Nothing in the world can ever be easy and everything sucks. “Hold.” It said, walking over to physically stop Dave from leaving. Dave really needed to work on making sure the coast was clear before he tried stunts like this. A bronze-blooded troll seemed to have been holding the line here, one that Dave seemed to completely miss when he was assessing the situation for the first time earlier. He was an intimidating dude too, not only because Dave didn’t have a ton of experience in dealing with trolls, but also because he was taller and, seemingly, a lot stronger than Dave. Upon actually realizing this guy was there, Dave deflated a little. Why were all of these soldier types bigger than him? He needed an out. “Where are you headed? The day isn’t over. Go to work.”

“I- uhm, where am I headed?” Not the most promising start, Dave. I realize you’re spooked out of your mind, but come on. You’re in a life or death situation here. Luckily, an idea hit him right after he stuttered that out: just use the fire. “Dog, the building I was supposed to check out is burning down, like, right now. While we sit here dilly dallying, the whole shit is going up in flames. Check it out for yourself.” That should both get this guy off his back AND save the poor dude he had to clock sitting in there naked! Talk about two birds with one stone.

The guy squinted at him, obviously pretty suspicious. He had a right to be, Dave was telling him something pretty suspect that the troll dude had absolutely no reason to actually believe. Fortunately, the troll seemed to cave, sighing and looking towards the planetarium with a wary look on his face. 

“Fine. But you come with me.” Oh.

Obviously, that wasn’t something Dave could do. Dave imagined that seeing a naked dude knocked out in the building he had just came from wouldn’t cast him in the best light. Still, he had to say  _ something _ . “You want me to go back in there? It’s a burning building, yo. Come on. You’re playing with me. I’m not getting my ass toasted like a marshmallow because-

He was cut off by the troll pulling out a baton and growling. Honestly, it was a great subtle threat. Classic City 17 stuff, a real 10 out of 10 power move. “Come.”

“Yessir.” Dave was not in the mood for a beating right now. Who ever was? He had to think of some crafty way out of this that wasn’t straight up trying to trick the guy, Dave realized as he started to follow the troll back to the planetarium. Hm. Fighting the guy was out of the question; one, the guy had a weapon Dave didn’t wanna tango with, and two, there’d be other dudes who would jump on Dave instantly. Sure, he had a gun, but- it was just not an option. Fighting the troll wasn’t going to work. Duping the troll wasn’t going to work either, he’d already tipped his hand. He was pretty sure there was no way to dip out after alerting the guy to a whole ass emergency, nobody could play that off chill-ly, not even Dave.

That really left one thing left to do. He waited a few seconds, walking with the guy for a little to make it seem like Dave was really going to go back into the flaming building, falling behind ever so slightly so Dave wasn’t in his field of vision, and BAM! Dave took off in the other direction, making a break for it.

It wasn’t his best idea in the world. For one, the troll guard instantly caught on and started chasing after him. Dave had gotten a head start, but he didn’t know where he was going or if he could even out run the troll. Two, the troll was calling for backup. Dave didn’t know if it was working, but he took a quick glance back and no, yeah, it was totally working, there were two more trolls on his tail. What did you expect him to do, though? Shoot at them? That would only cause more problems, like reinforcements, and drones, and things that Dave definitely couldn’t handle with a pistol and 7 shots.

Dave kept running at this pace for a solid 20 minutes. His main goal, other than getting away from the dickhead guards who wouldn’t let up, was getting off of Northerly Island where Adler Planetarium sat. It was connected to this big park area which was all made up of grassy lawns and museums. The area was all fun and great when you wanted to take a day trip before the whole alien invasion thing, but the area’s pretty shitty when you want to get away from alien guards chasing you down for skipping out on your work detail slash knocking someone out and burning down a building. Dave was pretty sure they hadn’t figured that last one out just yet; if they had, a lot more people would be bearing down on him right now. Dave figured that as soon as he was out of these grassy lawns with huge sight lines, he would be able to duck into alleys and around corners, making him a lot harder of a person to find. 

Eventually, his pursuers did figure out a building was on fire and turned back. Dave just kept running because he didn’t want to be anywhere near this area when they finally put two and two together. Really, considering the whole arson and assault thing, this entire block was due to get hit with a wave of Imperial pigs, and Dave didn’t wanna be standing around with an iron on his hip when it happened. It’s not like he could relax either. Dave was willing to bet those guys called it in, meaning his ass was grass if he stopped trying to dodge Imperials any time in the near future. There was even probably some hastily thrown together APB out on Dave, describing him as a manlet with blonde hair, pale skin and sunglasses and telling all grunts on patrol to personally find and fuck with Dave’s human face as soon as possible. He was starting to think this whole “arson” plan was really bad. He made a mental note to ask about who put him up to this once he got back

The lack of pursuers did allow Dave to slow his pace down some, though. As a result, he was finally able to take in some of the sights around here. Some of the stuff he saw was pretty surprising, for instance, he didn’t realize people still lived and worked in The Loop. He’d definitely realized it was one of the few places downtown that was still getting power- pretty hard to ignore the fact it’s the only part of the skyline that lights up- but he didn’t realize trolls had actually moved into the place and started working. It meant the streets were actually active; never busy like they were when millions of humans inhabited the city and weren’t being used as slave labor by alien conquerors, but active. There were definitely people walking along the streets that would glare at Dave when he jogged past. Thank god, what would he do without being judged by strangers on the street? He figured the streets would probably be even more active during the nighttime, considering trolls were nocturnal to Dave’s knowledge. It really makes you think. How did the trucks get out of here anyway? Moving under the cover of night doesn’t really work if there’s more people out at night than during the day, and it’s not like the trucks were discrete or anything. Maybe it was sort of like taking a drive during rush hour, no one really questions the strange trucks because they’re all too busy doubling over backwards and shouting up their own ass cheeks about chucklefucks on the road or something.

Dave ducked down into an alley, trying to catch his breath. After all of that running, a brief moment of downtime was exactly what Dave needed. He leaned up against a wall, panting and sweating and feeling like a general mess. His lungs burnt like he’d just inhaled a heap of dust, and his sides weren’t faring to better. His legs were literal jelly, threatening to bend under him and sit his exhausted ass right square on the ground. It sucked. Today was probably the most running he’d done since the initial invasion itself, and that was two years ago. He’d fallen out of shape for this kinda “running for your life” horsefuckery.

The alley itself was a terrible place to try to get a break in. Number one, it was just sorta filthy and grimy, it smelled like straight manure, and he’d parked next to a dumpster which was not really something Dave thought he should have to deal with while he was just trying to get air in his lungs. More importantly, he could hear the sirens and the incomprehensible radio barking of first responders (did trolls have those?) heading to the now burning planetarium, and he was still really close. If someone decided to start looking around in nearby areas, Dave was fucked, but, dude. His insides felt like how a Death Grips song sounds: everything was yelling at him all the time.

As much as he needed to rest for a bit, though, Dave wasn’t dumb. He realized he needed to think through his next move. It was sort of hard though, considering. What was his next move? He needed to get back to Adler tomorrow morning, but how was he supposed to do that? He just committed a major crime and there was no way some sort of investigation wasn’t going to start. It was simply impossible for him to actually do that without getting himself fucking glocked. Does anyone else feel like Dave was being set up to lose?

I mean, seriously. Let’s look at this entire situation without our bullshit “good cause” goggles on and think about this. What the fuck were they thinking? They left one guy at an old base to do a job that, to do it right, would take hours. In this same extremely backwards line of thinking, they left him there to do it in broad daylight where everyone could see and identify Dave as the guy doing it. Sure, trolls are more active at night, but it’s not like they could see perfectly in the dark or anything! This whole idea was just dumb! Then, to top it off, instead of opening a line of communication between Dave and the rest of the Front in case anything went wrong, they just told him “a car would be by in the morning” or whatever the fuck. I mean, come on. These aren’t extremely complex planning things, they’re literally basic ass concepts a toddler with lead poisoning could pick up on, and yet the leadership of a respectable, competent resistance group couldn’t? Why the fuck did he need to burn down the planetarium in the first place? What the fuck was going on?

As much as Dave didn’t really want to admit it, it looked as if he had been supposed to die back there. Or, well, maybe not die, but lose  _ somehow _ . Maybe he was supposed to have been arrested, beaten up, lost to the sands of time, forced onto TV crying, pleading for everyone to just get along, who knows! It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that it looked like the Liberty Front wasn’t exactly fighting for his liberty anymore, and Dave didn’t exactly get why. He’d been nothing but loyal to the cause, and they tried to put his ass down like a horse with a broken leg.

Now wasn’t really the time to get mad, though. It was the time to figure out how he was going to get through the night, because none of these revelations meant anything if Dave couldn’t get back there and start looking for answers. What should he do though? The fact was, there wasn’t even a guarantee he would have a ride come tomorrow morning, much less that Dave would actually be there for it. Dave would have to start looking at longer term solutions than just running away from trolls when he saw them. He needed to think about finding a place to sleep, getting food in his stomach, finding water. Basic essentials for life needed to be taken care of here, and Dave couldn’t really rely on anyone else to take care of them anymore. His first solo mission had evolved in a way no one could really predict; it left him completely alone, for the very first time in his life.

The betrayal still lingering at the back of Dave’s mind, he decided on what his new plan would be: to blend in. If Dave could pull it off, he would get meal tickets, housing, fresh clothes, and an alibi that should protect him until he can figure out how to proceed from here. Sounded fine to him. Hey, he might even get a real bed for once!

The trick was figuring out where to find any of these services. Dave didn’t exactly have the map of the city memorized, and he had no clue where any food lines or work buses would be. More information was a must right now, so it was time to move out from this particular alley. Dave got himself together and wiped his face off, walking out onto the street.

Chicago is a very expansive city, but it’s very easy to become numb to that after being there a while. Just like everything, the spectacle of it all wears off after a little while. Lights and people and busyness just aren’t impressive after days of nothing but lights and people and busyness, just like how a 2 story Walgreens might seem impressive the first time you walk into one, but soon it just becomes another part of your daily routine because, come on. It’s a Walgreens. It offers the same shit even if it does have more of the same shit stacked on an extra floor.

Seeing all of the lights and bustle stop, though, gives you a newfound appreciation for the city. Post-troll Chicago is like a Walgreens anywhere else in the United States of America: near abandoned, in disrepair, and full of untapped potential that seems so wasted when you look at the burnt out fluorescent lights and Jenny the 47 year old with feathers in her hair working the counter. It seemed like the entire city just stopped, with any glitz or glamor that was there before fading and dying over the last two years. You look up at the monolithic buildings and think about how every floor used to have something going on, people living their lives in it, and about how now the basically amount to husks. They’re shitty aisles in a shitty Walgreens, stuffed with discount candy and dust in a dark corner people refuse to fix the light for.

As famous feel-good party rapper Lil Yachty said: “You can hope it gets better, you can follow your dreams/But hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping.”

Dave had to wander between these terrible aisles, though, and it really sorta bummed him out. It was a terrible day. The sky was all overcast, everything was grey, he’d been betrayed by the group he’d given two years of his life to; everything was just bad. Now, to add to it, he might be trekking across 10,000 square miles of abandoned Chicagoland to try and find other humans. It might just work out though, surprisingly. Maybe. If he could actually do what he was setting out to do here. He kept wandering the aisles for a while, moving away from the big, shimmering skyscrapers with real opulent architecture near the skyline and towards these smaller, brick structures and apartment buildings, but it seemed really aimless. Dave didn’t exactly know what he was looking for. People were likely to just brush him off if he stopped them in the street, trolls especially. Additionally, there weren’t a lot of people to even try to stop on the street. As you moved out of the main part of The Loop, normal, working people got more and more scarce. Out here, it seemed like it was mostly military dudes and humans, and one of those groups Dave didn’t even have the option to stop.

There was no reason to just keep walking without reason, though. He could probably get some help if he just stopped in somewhere and asked, but it was hard to figure out where he could stop in or not. For example, tons of little restaurants had been retooled for the new Alternian consumer base out there, but Dave was having a lot of trouble figuring out which ones would be decently friendly towards him and which ones would just rat him out. The restaurants with all Alternian signs and an all-troll staff would probably be dangerous to pop into, but what about the ones with mixed staffs? Or ones that employed a ton of humans and still had signs in English, but served troll food and reported to the Imperials? Even asking where to go seemed like a risk Dave needed to calculate and weigh, and he was getting sick of it.  

Things were about to turn up for him, though. Remember how we just talked about how desolate everything was? After just a little while more of walking, Dave saw some humans headed in one direction, trailed by a few military guys. The population density on the street had been upped significantly as Dave wandered, which had to mean something important to humans was going down in that direction. Dave decided to just fall in line and follow them to wherever they were going. It wouldn’t be too hard to blend in considering there were just a few trolls keeping an eye on the whole group, and Dave figured wherever these guys were headed would probably be beneficial to him.

It was a way shorter walk than Dave thought it would be, and he stopped when he actually saw the thing, because, holy mother of god, the size of it. You wouldn’t get the scale from the gate, which was just a cloth sheet with the words “REDEEM MEAL TICKETS HERE” scrawled across it held up by two poles, but they had an operation running here. The lines were long, even split into multiple parts they looked nearly insurmountable as they sat on this depressing, fenced in concrete lot that looked eerily similar to a prison’s yard or something. The lines themselves were sorta unruly- this definitely, by no means, was an easy going theme park line. These were desperate people. Fights were breaking out, people had to be kept from cutting or arguing, and everyone had a very thick air of depression settled over them. It was really fucking with Dave’s head. The lines trailed out from several huts, which were heavily armored. Dave assumed it was to protect the people who gave out the terrible meal packs or whatever from any unhappy customers. Or, also, very plausibly to protect against insane rioting where the unhappy customers try to burn the entire place down and slaughter indiscriminately. Bread lines have a tendency to get people pissed. By the gate, a booth sort of sat where new arrivals were supposed to check in, judging by the other cloth banner. Nobody was sitting there, but that sorta made sense. One, no one would willingly check in to this Orwellian hellscape, and two, no one was a new arrival here. Everyone else had probably been here since the invasion, and the guy working that booth, if he was even still there, probably just sat there doing nothing but look pretty after the first few months. The dude manning it was about to get a big surprise, though, because enter Dave.

He approached the welcome center. It was significantly less defended than the other areas. Dave didn’t get why, did they just care about this guys life less than the others? They realized that if a riot did go down, this guy was just as likely to get merked as anyone else in this place, right? Whatever wasn’t his problem. He walked up to the little window, knocked a little and started. “Yo, I’m here to check in, as per the sign.”

The first thing he noticed about the troll working the booth spun around was how not put together at all the kid seemed to be. Like, holy shit, his hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush for as long as he’d been alive. The rest of the guy seemed to match up, with terrible bags under his eyes (which you think wouldn’t be possible because of the grey on grey, but, damn), the look on his face that just screamed “leave me the fuck alone, and the over all look basically being “schlub with a dash of I don’t care”. What a legend. Dave thought trolls were just robotic military dress machines, but it looked like at least one had a little bit of personality.

Unfortunately, as the guy started to talk, Dave realized it was the exact wrong type of personality he needed right now. 

“You already have your designation, so obviously you have already checked in,  _ as per the sign _ .” Jesus christ, the dude snarled that so hard if Dave was a lesser person it might’ve killed him. Goddamn. This guy was all edge, huh? “That’s all I’m required to say to you, so fuck off before I have to call the proper authorities.”

Dave did not wander around for what at least felt like hours to just fail here. Especially not at the hands of this douchebag. “Oh, my designation? You mean like, my name plate on here? These sick threads right here were just my bro’s. I borrowed them. I don’t have a pair of my own yet.”

The very unwelcoming welcome center guy just glared at him. “Holy shit, do you think I was hatched yesterday? I’m already salivating thinking about how I’m going to call this in on your brutally ignorant ass.” The troll mockingly picked up a phone, but it wasn’t calling anyone. Dave knew because he could hear that annoying, really loud sound a phone makes when you pick it up and no ones on the other end from the other side of the window. The guy was just being a huge dickbag. “Yes, hello? I’m calling about a sack of shame globes trying to weasel it’s way into a new, less abhorrently worthless designation. I need it removed from the premises.” He put the phone back down.

“Can you just check me in? Things don’t have to be a federal fucking issue all the time, like- we’re adults, right? You’re an adult, I’m assuming. I guess that’s kind of a logic leap to assume just because you’re working this thing, you’re an adult. Like leaping in between two motherfucking buildings, a la Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, only to realize you both don’t have superpowers and you have nothing to catch yourself with so you wind up plummeting-”

The troll went for the shudder. “I’m done with this. Bye.”

“Wait wait wait wait, hold on.” Dave said, physically placing himself in the window so the shudder couldn’t close. “Look. I just got here. I’m desperate, hungry, and alone. Can we just work something out? We don’t even have to do it out here in the open if you’re worried about *rules* and things like that. Just, help me out here.”

The troll kept glaring at Dave for a few moments, and Dave came to the conclusion that he just wasn’t going to do it. What a fucking jerk, letting some lonely teenager die on the street just because-

“Fine. Get in here.” The troll finally said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I'm over my weekend break (during which I just worked on this chapter), here it is! Chapter 3! Now we've met both of our main characters, AND we got a bunch of super long expository monologue that's only vaguely funny! This really is the fanfic that just keeps giving.
> 
> On a more serious note, thank you for all of the support. It really helps motivate me to write knowing people actually READ and LIKE this stuff. You're the true MVP's here. Thank you. <3


	4. frindship meter.................. activated

“Alright, here’s how this is going to work.” The troll with the terrible temper started. Dave took a look around the booth while he was explaining whatever he was explaining. The inside of the thing was pretty awful; the place was in disrepair and rusting, and basically nothing was in here but a lamp to light the small space. Dave didn’t even think there was AC. How could there not be AC? They were in a city that gets extremely cold during the winter, AC was like, a must. Also, now that Dave was actually in the room, he could see that he was in fact taller than the troll working the booth. Fucking finally, someone who isn’t towering over him. 

“The fact is,” The guy kept going, and Dave finally started half-listening while the troll closed the shudder. “there’s no open blocks I can throw you in. I wouldn’t be able to if I wanted to, everything even related to giving out respiteblocks is locked down harder than the royal grubshed, but, the good thing is you’re not completely fucked over yet. I can still get you a work designation, which, if you make the half-decent decision and actually do the work like the rest of us, should get you a decent amount of food and water every day. When a block opens up for you,  _ someone _ will probably throw you in it.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dave said, snapping back to the conversation at hand. Bro, this was important shit, don’t space out on the fucking AC. “So, what. Am I just supposed to crash on the street for an indefinite amount of time? No dice, bro, I need to sleep somewhere, and I’m not risking beatings or getting arrested because some bullshit bureaucracy said I couldn’t get a room.”

The troll sighed. “Can’t you be happy with the fact you’re getting fed now? There are plenty of people who would legitimately kill for a solid hunk of meat, and you’re sitting here fucking crying about it like a wiggler.”

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t be a little irked if you found out you came all this way just to be homeless because some arbitrary system said, no bro, you don’t deserve a government issued room to call your own?”

“There’s worse situations to be in.” The troll crossed his arms.

“Okay, yeah, like being tortured Guantanamo Bay style, but I don’t really want to be in that situation either. Come on, I’m not even asking anything unreasonable.” Dave said, holding his ground.

The troll stopped again, looking at Dave with the most exasperated look he’d ever been given. Finally, the troll caved once again. Dave must be some kind of charmer here, because this dude was crumbling under the weight of his charisma. Or, more likely, the guy just didn’t want to be a terrible person, which was the first time Dave had seen a troll make that decision. This was sort of changing his outlook on the whole “aliens are bad no exceptions” thing.

“Fucking- okay. I already know I can’t do jack shit, but if it keeps you from crawling up my waste chute about it, I’ll see what I can do. First, here. You need to take this.”  Haha, yes. Nice moves Dave. Ain’t nobody stopping you. The big man…. HASS the rock. The counter guy fumbled with some type of tablet welded to the wall to turn it on and bring something up. It looked difficult- mostly because the tablet was literally welded to the wall and working with static electronics like that sucked.

Dave approached, looking at what was just pulled up. It looked like some kind of quiz. Hm.

“It’s an aptitude test.” The troll explained. “Usually what they do is gather all of you wheeze bags into a huge testing facility and force you to take it so you’re all ready to go when I get you. Unfortunately, you’re the one wheeze bag who showed up here without taking it, so I need you to do it now. I wouldn’t suggest lying on it either; if you get assigned a job you’re not cut out for based on what you said on this, you’ll either wind up dead or a janitor, like the friend you borrowed the jumpsuit from.”

Dave started on it. As he did, he noticed that some of the questions were pretty unconventional, to say the least. Like- here. This one. “Rate your queasiness around corpses from 1-10.” Dave gave that one a 8. Dead things weren’t really something he was a stranger to, but he assumed they were talking about human corpses and the whole wanton murder thing made him stick to this stomach. Ooh, how about this one: “Are you a clown, harlequin, or some other type of jokester? Answer yes or no.” Dave gave that one a solid no, of course. Who even had time to be a jokester? C’mon, get real.

The test was fine, though. It was long, sure, but most of the questions were amusing enough to make the entire process worth it. For real, it was like they set out to make the goofiest test possible and Dave was eating it up. Aside from that striking form of entertainment, and man was it striking, Dave managed to entertain himself by taking note of what the other guy was doing. I mean, all the troll was doing was messing around with some weird-looking smartphone, but Dave was keeping an eye on him just in case the guy was ratting him out or saw Dave’s picture online or, y’know. Something. Maybe Dave was a little paranoid; years and years of propaganda had told him that all trolls were self-interested and maniacal, looking for any opportunity to kill humans like some overly grimdark comic book villains. Even though this one (as rude as he may be) was actually doing him a huge favor, it was hard to get over this feeling things were going to flip up. 

The troll noticed him looking, they had a brief moment of eye to shade contact, and the troll shifted away. Aw, fuck. Now Dave felt awkward. He went back to the test.

After focusing in, Dave got it done pretty quickly. It’s not like it was hard; all of the questions were relatively harmless things about Dave’s skills and interests that felt more like a Buzzfeed quiz than something actually meant to place Dave in a career. Just for fun, he hyped up his art and music skill. SBaHJ surely counts as a postmodernist masterpiece even to those Alternian dudes with a stick shoved up their butts, it was like, some kind of universal constant. Also, he overestimated how good he was with people based on this encounter, because, I mean- come on. Who wouldn’t? Upon finishing up, though, the test starting asking for some personal information that Dave didn’t exactly have. More specifically, the thing wanted an identification number, and Dave had no idea what the fuck those were. He got the concept, obviously, but when did everyone on the planet get one? Dave looked up at the troll again, pointing. “It wants an ID number? I don’t have one of those.”

The troll groaned. “Where the fuck did you come from that didn’t give you an ID number?” Dave swallowed hard, starting to lose his cool a little until the troll started to speak again. “Nevermind, don’t actually answer that. I don’t wanna hear your life story.” He said, moving Dave aside and bringing something else up on the tablet. “Enter your name, place of origin, wriggling day, and uh, your gender. Basic stuff.”

“Bro, can you chill out a little?” Dave scoffed as he started inputting the information. This seemed easy enough.

“What? I am chill.” The troll responded, moving back over to the other corner of the room. There was definitely a defensive edge to his voice, though.

“If you’re so chill, then stop being such an abrasive jerk. You’re acting like you just saw me taking a dump in your Froot Loops or something.” Dave said, moving back. “I’m done with this, by the way.”

The troll moved back in, hitting a few more buttons and typing in some information in Alternian, something Dave decidedly did not know how to read. Seriously, he needed to learn this stuff. “Oh, fucking fantastic, now I’m getting called names by the random human who came begging for help. This is what we’re doing now??? Making fun of our benefactors????” The troll stepped back from the tablet, looking Dave dead in the- shades. Hm. “I’m going far out of my way for you, so I’d appreciate it if you kept your objectively awful opinions on me to your goddamn self. Here’s your new ID number, you pompous prick in shitty sunglasses.”

Back to the corner the troll went, this time with a pout on his face Dave actually understood. Well, not completely. If anything, Dave should be the one pouting. He just got laid into. It was fine, though. Dave moved in silently and started filling the final page of that test out with the stupidly long ID number, because there was nothing he could really say to the troll’s last statement that would mean anything. As the kids say, the troll really “got on him”. Dave’s neck had officially been snatched. Don’t get him wrong, of course he wanted to argue back. Just because someone is helping you out doesn’t mean you can’t call them out when they’re being an asshole bigger than the planet they took over in the first place, and Dave was barely restraining himself from saying all of that. Dave had to hold back for right now. He didn’t know how far he could push this guy until he stopped getting help from the troll, and damn did Dave need the help. Fucking all of that up just because he wanted to be a prick would be a shame.

After a few more mundane things the test asked from Dave, he was done. A quick assist from a still bitter troll who read the actual thing out to him and Dave had his new designation: Propagandist #198-CL. It was sorta fun to think about which question influenced the test’s decision the most. Maybe it was the part where he called himself a real master of language. Maybe it was the part where he called himself a master artist, a true successor to the greats, a regular Michelangelo. Those stuck up dicks in propaganda will sure have fun when they realized Dave based all of that on his objectively fantastic webcomic. Dave could see the good times coming from a mile away.

“Alright.” Dave said. After getting all of this done with; getting a designation, an ID, hell, the troll even printed Dave a new nameplate, which would be super helpful. The fact was, the last time anyone saw him he was- well. Whatever that old one said. Now he was Propagandist #198! Two completely different people. There was still one thing that needed to get done, though, arguably the most important part of this whole process to Dave. “We got all of that out of the way. Now, you said you were going to give me a better form of housing? Being a bum isn’t in the cards if I’ve gotta be working too. Homelessness is a full-time job.”

The trolls face twisted, like he’d been dreading this question for a while now. “I said I’d see what I could do, not that I would magically pull a home out of nowhere for you-”

Groan. Come the fuck on. He’s going to go back on his promise like that? Not on Dave’s watch. “Dude, what. Do we have to go back over this? I can whine and complain about it more, if it gets the process going faster.” Dave started. He had a much longer monologue in mind, but, really, we get enough of those in this story. Plus, Dave was cut off.

“Can you let me finish before feeling sorry for yourself?” The troll snapped. “What I was going to say was, I can’t get you housing right now. I looked; if people who actually know what the fuck they’re doing can’t get into the system and switch things around, then I have absolutely no hope. Before you get your underpants in an entire fisherman's knot though, I have a temporary solution.”

Dave was praying the troll didn’t ask Dave to be his roommate. That would be the corniest bullshit in the history of the universe, like, what is this? Fanfiction? 

“The apartment, duplex,  _ thing _ I was given was originally supposed to be two different hives. It’s too much space for me, and they’re only conjoined by a hallway leading to the front door. You can stay in the other half, temporarily, if you  _ really need to _ .” This was obviously the only way the troll could work out getting Dave a place to stay, and, man. It was kinda touching even though the guy himself was such a dick most of the time. “There’s nothing in there, except for some old stuff of mine I didn’t consider too mortifying and an old loungeplank I guess you could sleep on? Also, just so we’re clear, this is an extremely temporary thing, only until you get assigned a block somewhere in the city.”

Once he was done, Dave just said the first thing that came to mind. Spoiler alert, he was fucking bewildered. “Yo, uh- this is nice and all, but I don’t even know your name. Are you sure about this? Or- wait, better question. Why are you even putting me up in the first place? We’re strangers.”

The troll looked as conflicted as Dave looked surprised. The guy looked like he was turning over his answer in his head, working out the particulars, trying to find just the right amount of sensitive information to share with Dave. “I don’t really want to get into it.” He finally responded. “Do I need to give you the reason? What if I’m trying to be a half-decent person?” 

It was dodging, waaay obvious dodging at that, but Dave didn’t actually wanna dig. One, as previously stated, he didn’t know how far he could take it before this troll rescinded his help. Two, if the troll was some kind of axe murderer, did Dave really wanna know? He’d just lock his door at night and not worry about it. It would be fine. Probably. Okay, maybe he should ask about the axe murderer bit.

“And this isn’t a ploy to get me alone so you can chop my head off or something, right? Just- it would be two completely separate homes, right.” He was in full on clarifying mode. If they just shared a front door and nothing else, Dave would be cool. If they were having daily tussles over who gets the shower? Not cool.

The troll looked exasperated. “Okay, you don’t have to rub it in. You don’t have to take the offer, it was probably a bad idea in the first place.”

He’d finally found the breaking point, which was weird. This troll got really defensive really easily. To be fair to him, though, Dave had hassled him alot about finding him a place to stay. Maybe it wasn’t so unreasonable for the troll to be frustrated when Dave got all snarky about it. “No, no, look, I’m not going to pass up a decent bed. I’ll take it. But, like, I need to know some basic things, like, for example, what your name was.”

“Karkat Vantas.” The troll stated.

Wow, weird. Karkat. Okay. “Alright, Karkat. Hi, I’m Dave. I’m 18. How old are you?”

Karkat seemed to get a little more frustrated. “Is there an actual point to this? I’m not 90 years old or whatever other contingency you’re probing towards. I’m probably about as old as you, I live alone, I don’t have my lusus rummaging around my block, and that’s all you really need to know.” Karkat pushed himself of the corner, checking his weird phone thing one more time. “Before you go down another terrible line of questioning, we need to get going. Shifts rotate soon, and if we want to get you into the apartment relatively unnoticed, we need to get going now.”

Dave didn’t know how good he felt about going home with the stranger right now. Couldn’t they get to know each other a little? Hang out? “Karkat, dude, I’m sure it’s not that big of a deal. Why would we need to get going now?”

A groan from Karkat was his response. “Do you ever stop asking stupid questions?? Come on, get out of the booth.”

Dave complied, mostly because the thing was extremely small and it was starting to get sorta stuffy, but, hey. He stood outside, watching as Karkat locked the entire check-in booth down, and thought about this entire situation. Why was he just going along with this? There were more iffy points in this whole arrangement than Dave was willing to admit, like the fact that Karkat probably had the key to the apartment Dave would be staying in, or how staying with a troll had the potential to royally fuck him over. Hell, staying near a troll in general had the potential to fuck him over. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be many better options, something Dave realized all too well. The day was coming to an end, and if he turned this offer down, Dave would have to be content napping on the cold hard ground. The homeless were consistently picked up by the police back when things were normal, Dave could only imagine how hard trolls would crack down on it. At least this way, Dave would get a space to himself, a bed- or, well, a couch to sleep on, and some privacy to start planning his next step, even if a looming threat was hanging over his head

Another hopeful thought came to mind: it would also be a half-decent way to integrate into society here. Having a troll willing to vouch for Dave as a friend could be valuable if Dave ever got picked up by the police for the arson of the Adler Planetarium. Having a job and a role here could take some of the suspicion off of him as well; being a decent and responsible worker tends to make people see you as less of a criminal and more of a regular ol’ joe who’s respectable and normal. Having people see you with a normal routine makes it more unbelievable that you would do something like burn down a planetarium seemingly at random.

Dave might just be rationalizing this move to himself, but, hey, those were all still legitimate reasons. No matter how much some may say Dave is making excuses for getting a bed, integration was a part of his plan for right now, and having a place to stay would definitely help with that.

There was no more time to think about it though; Karkat was out of here. Dude was power-walking over to the street, leaving Dave to play catch-up. There wasn’t even a simple “follow me” from the troll to make sure Dave was behind him. Rude. Dave followed along once he realized Karkat was leaving the area, though it involved some dorky jogging before Karkat ollied out and left him there. 

They walked in silence, which Dave found kind of depressing and just a hair awkward. Really, when you meet someone and invite them to live in your place, don’t you want to get to know them? Y’know, make sure they’re not some sort of creepy sex pervert who’s going to wank it to your sleeping figure or something? If it was Dave who had invited a stranger into his home, he would be chatting up a storm, getting buddy buddy with the person, setting up barbecue dates and inviting them over and stuff. He would’ve made sure he knew the person inside and out, because you never know who you’re inviting into your home. Even if you don’t want to do that, which, I can see why, you have to be a little social, even if it’s just so you don’t weird the other person out. It was fine, though; Dave would definitely break the ice later. For right now he was enjoying this nice stroll. Dave had done his fair share of walking for that day, why not top off the day with a little bit more? It’s like some recurring theme. The only thing different was now he was walking into the sunset with his newfound- uh. Friend? Neighbor? His newfound neighbor, his partner in home residency: Karkat Vantas. Yep. Just, strolling along. Keeping quiet. Dave really hoped living next to Karkat wouldn’t be as awkward as walking with him. 

Eventually, it became unbearable for Dave. I mean, come on, he talked to his own damn self, how are you going to expect him to not talk to another person? There had been too much permeating silence, too much awkwardness seeping into Dave’s soul, he had to take action. “So, uh. You got any hobbies? Anything you’re into?”

Karkat just glared. “I mean- yeah, I guess? We’re almost there, can we stay quiet just a little while longer?” Which felt unfair, Dave was only trying to make small talk.

“Karkat, dude, it’s not like I’m digging into your life. That was a softball question that you just completely fucked up. I threw, you dropped the bat and ran three miles away from the ball.” Dave could see the sun starting to dip below the buildings ahead of them. It would probably be night soon. He really hoped they weren’t actually outside when that happened.

“Why do you care?” Which was unfair again. Karkat, man, you are really bad at small talk.

“Why are you so cagey? Bro, I’m starting to think you’re a little more than a mysterious, bitchy benefactor. Maybe you are an axe murderer. Should I be worried? Am I going to find bodies laying around when I get to your place?” Dave was joking obviously, but it was lingering in the back of his mind. Why was he following along again? Man, self-preservation makes you do crazy stuff.

Karkat huffed loudly. Over asking about his hobbies. This guy. “Alright, okay, uh. I’m into movies.” 

It was the bare minimum answer, so you could bet Dave was going to try and draw more out of him. “Alright, there you go. Go on.”

“I’m sort of into programming.” He sounded crazy unsure of himself, though. “I’m so damn terrible at it I don’t think it’s worth mentioning. There’s a reason I’m a supposed ‘translator’ instead of a software engineer or something, I’d be liable to push something out that boned up most of the computers in the Empire. This really isn’t important in any way, though, why are we mulling over what I do in my free time??”

Okay, there we go, common ground. Programming was something Dave could relate to, maybe, possibly. Well, no. The closest thing to coding he’d ever tried to do was the straight up TERRIBLE javascript job he tried to do to get some ads going for SBaHJ back in the day, but it was so bad Dave didn’t even really want to think about it. 

“I feel you bro.” Dave started, getting all relatable on him. “I tried to code before all of this went down. Shit just DID NOT WORK. You could try to get that thing to work, but it was not getting its ass off of the couch. You could tell it, ‘Dawg, you’re 30 years old, get a fucking job and stop playing Halo 2 you freeloading loser’ but it’d just get back into matchmaking, collect another birthday check from it’s loving and concerned mom and go right back to not working, because it was not doing it.”

And thus, the bonds of friendship were beginning to be formed. Karkat looked confused as all hell, but that was just all the friendship bonding to his brain cells. “Halo 2? Who even plays Halo 2 anymore?”

“That’s what I’m saying. I’m willing to bet the entire playerbase of Halo 2 are freeloading motherfuckers above the age of 25 who collect birthday checks from their moms. Prove me wrong- oh, wait, that’s right, you can’t. You scream Halo 2 in a crowd and I guarantee the people who respond are either going to be holy jacked gods of bro-itude crushing Red Bulls against their skull who haven’t moved on from 2004 or they’re going to be the most neckbeard-iest of neckbeards you’ve ever seen. A true motley crew of insanely awesome homies and grease pit elitists.” Maybe the solution to this conversational problem was to just confuse Karkat into asking more questions. At least that way one them was saying something.

“Dave, what the fuck are you talking about. This is nonsense. What you’re saying right now doesn’t mean anything.” Like that’s going to stop him from talking. Karkat doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. Fortunately for Dave, though, Karkat at the very least seemed slightly entertained by the whole thing.

“I’m just breaking down the demographic we’re talking about here. Halo 2 fans don’t exactly come in many shapes and sizes. They’re sorta like the Urban Outfitters of gamers, inoffensive at first glance, but a big ol’ helping of shit stew upon further inspection. It’s like-”

“Great, yes, that explained everything! Every single question I had about your panless rants are answered! You did it. You don’t need to explain anything else, ever.” Karkat said, heading up to one of the buildings. Oh, were they here? Oops. Dave had just been talking, and honestly, he’d sorta zoned out on the beauty of his own wordsmithing. The shit that he was putting together? Never been put together before. There are Grade-A observations, some real quality shit that folks on the internet would pay top dollar for.

Still just following Karkat, Dave headed up the stairs of this old-ish brick apartment building. It looked surprisingly well-maintained compared to the planetarium he’d been sleeping in for the past few days. God, the ever growing excitement about having a comfortable thing to sleep on was getting ludicrous at this point. His heart was pounding at the meer concept of a bed like item. A nice place to nestle his head. The only thing standing between Dave and a decent night’s sleep were these damn stairs at this point, and he was determined to get through them. There was just too much at stake.

Their floor came up soon enough. Once they were up there and in the duplex thing, Karkat bluntly gave Dave the key and told him to ‘knock if you need something’, but dude, Dave was just going to crash. The adrenaline rush was wearing off big time, and now he felt like a zombie. A walking pile of regrets, shambling around, making quips. Like Ultimate Peter Parker or something. Wow, that was a reference, huh? Hey, all you Ultimate Marvel fans, that one was for you! Anyway, Dave shambled on into the apartment, flicking on the nearest lightswitch and taking a quick look in front of him.

It was a barebones apartment, with plain white walls and a half decent view, but oh my god did Dave not care about any of that bullshit right now. He saw a couch which looked like a half decent thing to sleep on and went for it without hesitation. Dave plopped down on the thing and took a deeeep breath, letting all of the stress flow out of him. Fuck. Yes. This was exactly what he needed. He didn’t even care that his eyes were drifting closed even while he was still covered in sweat and grime, he needed this. Dave needed this naptime right here. It took a few moments of tossing and turning on this admittedly mediocre couch, but Dave was finally getting his first peaceful nights sleep in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, okay, sorry. This was supposed to go up yesterday, but I just COULD NOT write those last few paragraphs. Anyways, here's chapter 4! No huge plot stuff goes down, but it's fun, and I got to make a bunch of very specific references. There might be some issues with pacing, but I read through it and thought it flowed fine. Hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> Oh, nearly forgot too. I've got a Tumblr you can follow me on if you wanna check out any of my future projects (which, judging by the workload i just took on, there's going to be a ton of). Almost all of them I had a hand in writing and doing music for, so if you enjoy my tedious, slow burn style of writing, follow me at queermaggot.tumblr.com! You can also ask me anything about THIS story there, but I won't answer anything too brazen. Unless it's just the right amount of brazen. Who knows?


	5. a day in the life

The next few days were relatively simple. There was no running around, dodging bullets and hiding for your life. No burning down buildings and getting put on a watchlist. Dave’s life was just work, home, sleep, repeat. Which felt good! Holy shit did it feel good. He never knew how good a soul-sucking office job could feel after sleeping in caverns and running from the law for most of the last two years. Settling into normal life around here was different, sure, but good.

The first weird thing about it was the regular showers. You just don’t know how dirty you actually are until you use a shower again and feel like an angel, free of all blemishes, glowing and radiant. It’s probably the most refreshing experience that any human could ever experience while still on this mortal plane, and Dave was so happy he was blessed enough to be at that point. The next weird thing was the work.

Being constantly and consistently being put down and disrespected, fed into the throes of batshit confusing bureaucracy, and watched in one way or another nearly every hour of the day while also having nearly no creative control over your work was really fucking weird. Dave got on a bus at 5:30 every week day to get to work, and from then until 7 at night when he got home he was just Propagandist #198-CL. Dave didn’t know how it was closer to the bottom-- he was willing to  wager it got a lot worse the less specialized your job was-- but where he was, it was just like an office from hell. He had a big, burly ass troll supervisor who looked like he just hated his job hanging over him while he used a tablet to make flashy posters glorifying the Alternian Intergalactic Empire. No one really talked much; in fact, you were reprimanded if you tried. The walls and floors were a flat grey and there were no windows to speak of. The worst part of it all, though, was the quality control department.

They, apparently, had a real hard on for this Empress chick. Even if Dave  _ wanted  _ to make something subversive and interesting that could even possibly work as propaganda, he was forced to print flat out lies that glorified this one person in particular. It was weird, almost like they didn’t actually care about keeping to population in check, just plastering the Empress’ face all over the walls. It also meant they didn’t really care what was on it as long as it made her look good and was pink with glitter text though, so Dave could at least have a little fun. He’d hide things like teensy dicks and that one S everyone made in middle school in the corners of the posters and they just wouldn’t notice. It was fun, possibly the only legitimately satisfying part of the job. Handing one of these things in knowing that it would get put on a skyscraper in LA or something with a 5 foot wang in the corner was just a thrill.

Even in the 3 days Dave had worked there, though, he could tell this workplace was pretty damn uneasy. On his first day, while he was getting put into the system or whatever (which was surprising to Dave, he’d figured there’d be some flag on his name or something that would tell anyone looking at his profile or whatever to whack him), someone had tried a more outward form of resistance in their posters and got punished for it. The guy never came back to his job. No one really talks about it. Nobody wants to, which is the most terrifying part. No one cared about this guy. It’s hard sneaking little easter eggs into your work when the looming threat of just disappearing completely hangs over you. Y’know, actually, it’s hard to do any work at all when the looming threat of just disappearing hangs over you. That sort of threat kinda fucks with the creative process and all that. Who was to say he couldn’t just get whisked away for using the wrong glittered block lettering, much less hiding images in the posters? He really hoped that quality control department never got any better, because if they did, Dave would probably be the first one getting re-educated or whatever the fuck they do to the people who just up and disappeared.

After work, he rode the bus home, watching the sun start to set. It was mostly just the same grey, barren, depressing city streets they were driving past though. It brings to mind the Mockingjay movie or a video game from 2008, where the directors just took a really shitty grey palette to everything all of the sudden and called it good looking. Any lights on the street came from people walking by or the bus itself and the power was mostly shut off, so it made for a pretty shit ride. The guy next to him always read by whatever light there was, though. Dave didn’t know what he was reading, the guy was real cagey about his books, but judging from the way he got anxious when a troll walked by it couldn’t have been a LEGAL thing to read. Other than watching him and gazing out the window for a while, Dave didn’t have anything to do, which was terrible. It was 20 minute ride back to Karkat’s spot, so Dave was usually just sitting there bored and tired until he got home around about 7:50.

Then, Dave went to cash in his meal ticket for the day. If you thought that looking at the hellish lines on this thing from an outside perspective was bad, try standing in it. You were there for hours, harsh, fluorescent (or something like fluorescent) flood lights beating down on you, people getting pissed behind you and your mood just being systematically crushed throughout the whole process. It was a big fucking ordeal too. You had to get filtered through a security checkpoint before actually getting in; luckily Dave had been leaving the ol’ gun on his bathroom counter for a while now, but getting pat down by strong dudes with claws and fangs was still nerve wracking. You have no idea if there’s just going to be a time where some troll fuck decides it’s just not your day and sends you off to be executed or whatever. Dave did not enjoy the process.

After making it through there, you wait for the stretch up to the counter which, somehow, was even longer and more soul crushing. Dave finally figured out where the posters they were making ended up, and god, seeing them just drained you. These terrible, faded posters were plastered up on the inside walls and columns haphazardly, with some older ones already starting to peel. They were mostly some shade of gaudy pink that printed bad, which is like, an eternally upbeat and warm color, but they still managed to bring Dave’s mood down a few notches. Just the principle of it was so fucked.

After THAT line, though, you got up to the counter, which seemed to be specifically designed to bring your mood down those final few notches and leave you numb to the world. It was just a loudspeaker and a flap that slid open to exchange things. You weren’t able to look in. You couldn’t touch anything. You just did whatever was barked at you because you needed some food. The guy barked at you in  _ Alternian _ for your meal ticket, which lead to tons of people being pissed with Dave the first time he went through the line. Once he got your ticket and you got your food, you left. Honestly, some of this garbage wasn’t even worth the effort. They didn’t exactly take the time to get human confectionaries in this bitch so instead you wind up with shit like, worms, and. Eugh. Other bug shit Dave didn’t want to touch because it’s just really fucking gross okay. He just ate the things that didn’t look like it was both alive and writhing, and then threw the rest away or gave it to Karkat.

Oh, yeah. That was the next weird thing: Karkat. Honestly, this dude was not what Dave expected out of a troll neighbor/roommate at all. Instead of the Chad who treated Dave like dogshit and, like, I don’t know, established dominance, Karkat was more like the insecure guy you were sorta friends with in highschool who doesn’t want you touching his sketchbook or seeing his room because fuck you thats why. Needless to say, Dave didn’t see Karkat much. He might pass by Dave on his way inside, but they didn’t talk much. Even when Dave did try to strike up a conversation, Karkat was in no way receptive to any of it. It usually went something like this:

Dave would say “Hi,” or “Hey,” or something along those lines.

Karkat would nod in response, or just respond with a curt “What do you want?” At which point Dave would just say nothing or hand off the shitty shity awful bug food and Karkat would go back on to doing whatever he was doing before hand.

It wasn’t really conducive to building an actual friendship in any sense of the word. Hell, it barely made them acquaintances. They had about the same relationship as the one you have with the quiet guy who sits next to you on a plane. You acknowledge that the other is there, and you try to make sure you don’t crowd them and all that, but all in all, you’re not talking. Normally, this would be chill. In any other situation, Dave would’ve been just peachy with this setup. Why waste time trying to build something with this guy when you have other friends, right? You can’t win them all. If someone isn’t interested in chilling with you, they’re not interested. No way to force them into the whole thing. 

Unfortunately, Dave didn’t exactly have anyone else to hang with anymore. Jade had been gone for a while and no one really knows where she ended up, which didn’t matter anyway. He had no way of contacting her anymore. John and Rose are with the rest of the Liberty Front guys, camping out in buttfuck nowhere doing little odd jobs to pass the time. All the social sustenance Dave had was locked within this little angry gremlin of a guy, and Dave had to find the key to get to it within this 100 acre corn maze that. It was frustrating. Maybe there was a secret troll friendship protocol he wasn’t adhering to? Who knows?

Dave had to get through the next day first though. Right now he was just mulling all of this over in the shower, just enjoying the wee hours of the morning before he had to get his sorry ass on the work bus. Dave can’t say  _ anything _ about befriending Karkat before he knows if he’s going to be killed at work today or something like that. Whew. Can you believe people used to think that was an irrational fear? Chumps. Bet they never saw this shit coming. Now it’s, like, a daily thing people just get over. How fucked up is that? I guess we sorta did the same thing, though, just to our fucking schoolchildren which is so much worse. We were WILD. Plus, swatting went on for, like, years, and the strongest condemnation we got of it was in Watch Dogs 2 for christ’s sake. I can’t even tell what’s more evil here: genocidal trolls, ruining streamer’s lives, or Ubisoft.

The shower curtain made that rolling noise as they slid over to the side and Dave grabbed himself a towel, thereby ending his overextended mulling-over session. After some drying off and some teeth brushing, Dave got on some clothes.

That was another thing he loved about this place: fresh clothes. No more grungy wife beaters for him! No sir, from this point on Dave was only wearing the highest quality marginally clean jumpsuits. Before this, his clothes always wound up starchy and sorta smelly from whatever washboard method he was forced to use in the dingy fuckholes they shacked up in, but now he had WASHING MACHINES. God, FUCK. YES. He doesn’t have to walk around smelling like relish and bat vomit all the time, thank god. Motherfuckers were giving him side eye, like they were saying ‘did that dude really have the gall to walk by us smelling like the San Antonio Zoo took a dump on some expired milk’ and Dave was starting to get really self-conscious about it, but this wonderful machine just wiped the stink away. Really, it’s like all this quality of life bullshit was invented for a reason!

Once he was dressed, he was set! The shower was a little longer than he expected, like they always were, but Dave still had a generous 30 minutes to get up to his work bus stop. That meant Dave could take his time on the walk for once, really breathe in the crisp dystopian air around this place, and god was he looking forward to it. He packed himself up, grabbing his flashlight and a sneaky pen knife, and got ready to go. As he left, he was practically skipping through the hallway and down the stairs of this place. Life was so fantastic. It doesn’t get better than this.

Walking through the street was terrible at this time of day. The sun was only just starting to come up, so there was basically no light to speak of. That’s why Dave needed the flashlight. It was really to spot other people getting to work; trolls had way better night vision, as Dave had learned from Karkat after the troll had corrected some weird ass comment Dave didn’t even remember making anymore, so all the humans were the ones with flashlights. Convenient! This had the adverse effect of making the morning rush looked more like a search party then a morning rush, but it was easy to see who was a human and who was a troll, so there’s that. Batteries for these flashlights weren’t government issued either, you had to buy them with meal tickets. Dave had no idea who came up with that rule, but you could ask for batteries in the bread line. They even gave you a free flashlight with your first purchase too, just incase you forgot this was like, your only light in the night time. That is, unless you lived with a troll in which case you got actual power. Lemme get a ‘fuck yeah’ for freeloading, yo!

Some minutes of walking later and Dave was at the bus stop. He had five minutes to spare, but these things weren’t really known for being on time. In fact, they were nearly never on time, something the driver yelled at YOU over a lot. Dave wagered the bus wouldn’t show up for another, uh. 15 minutes maybe? Who knows. Dave leaned up against whatever was next to him, taking a load off while lights filtered in around him, all of them braving this uncertain wait.

The bus did come, like, 13 minutes late. Maybe he was starting to get the hang of the schedule around here? Jesus, how weird would that be? Getting used to a schedule. Dave didn’t even have school to give him a schedule or anything as a kid, he was always homeschooled/trained by his brother. This was a first for him, and y’know what? Living normally was kind of great. He sat down in the same spot he always did, looking out the window while book guy plopped down next to him, like he always did. The bus driver shouted at them in Alternian while the guard glared at him, like they always did. Some people might consider this a dark, depressing turn to all of this, but Dave felt great. I mean, sure, there was the whole dread hanging over his head thing, but that was there in the Liberty Front. You never knew when you were going to run into a pack of pissed off drones looking to murderize some folks. Hell, this is technically safer! It’s not like he was in it for the long run or anything either, when Dave got bored he’d just start working out his next move towards taking down the Empire. (And the Liberty Front, maybe. Revenge is a tricky thing. He was still pissed, sure, but there were some questions he still had about this whole thing.) Anyway, the point of all of this is, sometimes routine can be a good thing! You just have to know when it is and when it isn’t, and right now, Dave felt the like these were best times he ever had.

Work did suck just a little bit though. There were more shitty lines to wait in, just like there should be in any proper dystopia, just this time it was a line just to clock in. Once he did clock in, and believe me, it was an ordeal not to be taken lightly, he tried talking to the troll who oversaw him, but the troll just flicked Dave off and went back to playing on his phone, which Dave found kinda rude. Really, just say hi. How hard is it? Is it really harder than flicking a gnarled, clawed finger at Dave? Dave had never wished for someone to lose at a phone game harder than at that very moment, and he never would for the rest of this life. After that, there was just a whole lot of nothing. Yeah, seriously. He made a few poster designs, sent them off to one guy to get colored, finished a few others, hoped he didn’t get decapitated over them. Y’know, all stuff that happens in a day’s work. C’mon, he already broke all of this stuff down when he was mulling it over in the shower.

There was one interesting thing, though. It happened towards the end of the day, and honestly, it was mind blowing: the shadow bosses in QC actually approved a design without glitter text! Better yet, it didn’t even have the Empress on it! Sure, it was still pink, but god, Dave felt palpable excitement. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally got to this milestone. This wouldn’t be a big achievement in any other, earlier propaganda departments because they use other colors and fonts, but god dammit does it feel good to know that creative freedom still exists. Even in the alien apocalypse.

It really colored the rest of his day. He got on his bus with a smile on his face because some guy managed to get a gaudy poster past QC without glitter text. It’s funny how you can take pride in little things others do like that. Like, yeah, this entire place is a shithole, but ha! Take that! We expressed ourselves through propaganda posters for you! It felt like a small act of rebellion that gave way more satisfaction than cutting down drones or something. Maybe this was where the war needed to be fought, in the workplace. The real battleground is office culture. Who knows. All Dave was sure of was that it made him look at book guy and the grey hellscape around him a little more fondly, even if it was just for that ride. Even going to cash in his meal ticket after work felt better; somehow, despite the rude pricks and the pat downs and the bug food, Dave walked away thinking, hey, there's still some good in the world.

The walk back to Karkat’s was all cast in golden light, which felt weirdly peaceful as well. Maybe it was just his mood now, but when he walked through these streets before they felt oppressive. He was scared all the time, checking behind him and keeping himself paranoid, but now? Now he was bouncing back. Getting betrayed is always a shitty thing, and Dave still had that revenge plan in the back of his head, but he might not mind living like this for a little while longer while that revenge plan he mentioned panned out. His life was comfortable for once.

Walking all leisurely like Dave was, it took him about 45 minutes to get back to Karkat’s, but it was worth it. Karkat had probably gotten home a little while ago, so Dave just figured he’d hand off the food, and, I don’t know. Try and spark up a conversation? How do you even do that when you basically know nothing about the guy? Whatever, Dave would just have to figure it out. He plodded up the building’s stairs, getting up to the condo thing they lived in and knocking on Karkat’s door to his side.

Karkat opened up way sooner than Dave had expected him to. “Again? You can’t just keep dumping this shit on me. My hunger trunk can only take so much unwanted grubloaf.” Aw, well. That wasn’t what Dave wanted him to open with.

“Yeah. Got some slimy stuff in there this time that I wouldn’t touch with a 50 foot telescopic baton, but apparently you fuckers eat it up, so here. The brown paper bag of slimy stuff.” Dave said, offering it to him. Karkat took it anyway, even after he was just complaining about being given the food. If there was one thing Dave had managed to learn about this dude, it’s that he was one hell of a complainer, even about stuff that he didn’t necessarily mind too terribly. It was just his personality, Dave guessed. Interesting aside, Karkat’s accent was way less pronounced than the other trolls Dave came into contact with. It seemed he’d really worked on it… for some reason?

After sifting through the bag for a while, making sure to thoroughly inspect it’s contents, Karkat looked back up at Dave. “Fine, yeah. I’ll take it, but this is the last time. You need to eat something at some point, you look like a fucking piece of thread as it is. Thanks. Bye.” Karkat started to shut the door.

“Wait, hold on.” Look, going another day with this exchange being his only social interaction was not in the cards for Dave, so he couldn’t let this chance slip by. He put his foot in the door, stopping it from closing. What should he bring up? C’mon, think! What would keep this really mundane conversation going? Oh, fuck, he’s got it. “I think I found a bunch of your old movies on my side of the spot, here. I’m talking crates of these things. Do you want me to bring them over? I can’t even read Alternian, much less understand the spoken language, so these things are basically useless hunks of plastic that spit weird clicking sounds to me. Why do you have so many, anyway? Is that your thing? Movies?”

Just going by Karkat’s face, you would’ve thought thought Dave just told him the guy was getting evicted, or that the drones were coming for him or something. Was a box of movies that serious? “I left my DVD’s over there? Fuck, why didn’t you tell me sooner?? Yes, I want them back, and don’t look through them or anything. You didn’t watch any, right?”

Dave just chuckled a little. Holy fuck, what was he getting into? “Dude, no. There’s not like, weird ass xeno porn on them right? I’m not going to find an especially sticky case in there? I need fair warning if I am, I don’t wanna be washing my hands compulsively for two days straight.”

“No! Gross, you putrid sicko. They’re not  _ that _ . They’re just-” Karkat stopped himself before finishing that, instead choosing another course of actions. “I’ll just get them myself, since you want to sit around and be a tool so large reality warps around you instead of actually doing something to help.” The little troll muscled past Dave, leaving his door wide open while he tried to open up Dave’s. God, this was fucking rich. Dave couldn’t help but grin.

“Yo, I’m sure it’s not that serious. Just calm down, bro, your DVD secrets are safe with me.” While Dave was speaking, Karkat was unlocking his door and just barreling in. That’s when Dave remembered: he’d left his GUN out. It was just sitting there in the goddamn bathroom, probably with the door wide open too. Fuck. Dave was such a dumbass. The DVD’s were all basically behind the couch, so it wasn’t like Karkat had any reason to go back to the bathroom, but Dave couldn’t just take a chance like that. He followed Karkat in.

“It’s fine, I’m getting them.” Karkat said, on a warpath while Dave was trying to get over to the bathroom so he could shut the door. After getting out of the hallway, he looked in and- oh, yeah. That was very clearly a gun, just sitting on the counter. Even without the bathroom lights on, the light from the rest of the condo just poured in there and glinted off the barrel. Jesus christ, dude, how stupid do you have to be? While Dave was slinking over to try and shut the bathroom door without anyone noticing, Karkat was struggling with some DVD boxes, which he didn’t seem to be able to lift without effort. He grunted a little, but after a few, kinda sad attempts, Karkat managed to scoop up the DVD box into his arms, red starting to bleed into his face from the whole ordeal. He still couldn’t get into a full standing position, though.

Dave scooted ever closer. If he could just shimmey over to the door while Karkat was adjusting the box in his hands he would be home free. Just a few more steps and he would have it. A few more steps. A loud thunk scared the shit out of him, but it was just Karkat dropping the box and trying to readjust his grip. Fucking christ, is it that heavy? Dave didn’t try liting it, but Karkat was making it seem like one of those old, heavy brick TV’s that took a town and a half to lift. Whatever, though, that's irrelevant. Time to focus on the goal here. Dave scooted towards the door, taking the last few steps, reaching out...

Karkat’s head whipped towards Dave, who was standing right next to the open bathroom door, ready to gloat. “See?” Karkat started, strain obvious in his voice. “I’m fine. Don’t even THINK about touching the second box while I’m taking this over or I will send so much shit your way, I’ll single-handedly revive the entire goddamn Postal Service. I will be right back.” And with that rousing threat, Karkat hobbled out of the room, box in his arms. He didn’t even seem to notice the gun in there.

Dave breathed a sigh of relief and finally shut that fucking door. That got way too tense for a second there, Dave had no idea how Karkat would’ve reacted to that pistol just sitting there. How would Dave have even played something like that off? Guns aren’t easy to explain to people now-a-days. Shit. Maybe he was getting a little too comfortable? He might’ve been settling in too much, maybe being on edge was the proper state living around a troll- no, hold on, wait. Dave was just psyching himself out again. Karkat was basically harmless, and he was a generally decent guy that Dave liked. Dave just needed to be better about keeping the whole “shooty shooty rebellion” side of him out of sight from everyone. That way, there wasn’t the big, looming chance it could come back and bite him in the ass somehow, like it almost just did. God, that was awful.

He was snapped out of this thought process by Karkat asking him a question while he went for the second box. Wait, shit, when did Karkat get back in the room? Dave must have missed it. “You’re sure you didn’t move anything? Some of these movies are really hard to find on Earth, I don’t want to find out something’s missing after the fact and shill out assloads of money because some shades wearing prick lost it.”

Dave nodded. “Yes. Think about it, what’s my motive? Like, I wouldn’t just sit down and watch one of these shits for the intrinsic artistic value and all that. That kind of horsefuckery is Wasting Time 101, in which chumps just sit around and do fuck all. I’m a busy guy, Karkat. I can’t just be watching bad alien pornos all day.”

Karkat actively snarled at that. “Fuck off. The only think you’re busy with is grabbing at your throb stalk and wondering aimlessly why you suck so much seedflap at all hours of the day.” Karkat started shuffling off with the other box.

Dave cracked up at that one. What a class act. “Hey, before you go, are there any actual human films in those boxes? Y’know, like, shit I could understand?”

The troll stopped his hobbling and sighed. “If the question is do I own any human movies, then yes. I do. None of these are human, though, so you can’t borrow any. Sorry not sorry.” Resume hobbling.

“No, no, that wasn’t going to be my question.” Dave said, forcing Karkat to stop, this time with an even more exaggerated sigh. “You think we could queue one of those bad boys up and watch it together?”

Oh. Karkat looked surprised for a second, before settling back into an even more hostile grimace than before. “Stop fucking with me. I’m leaving.”

Dave was kinda confused. What was up with that reaction? Dave thought he was asking something reasonably normal. “What? I’m proposing a movie night right here and now. I assumed you were into movies because of these DVD boxes you were so passionate about, was I wrong?

“No, you’re not wrong. I’m into some specific types of movies.” He caved, stopping and looking at Dave. “You’re not kidding?” Karkat’s face softened again. He’d never seen this guy so close to being neutral about something. Like, he stopped looking perpetually annoyed for five seconds, and that was crazy to Dave.

“No?” Dave responded. “I mean, I don’t really have anything else to do. It gets pretty boring round here at night.”

Karkat was still looking at Dave like this could all be fake, which Dave didn’t get at all. Who tricked this guy into thinking they cared about his movies? He almost felt bad for him, clearly something happened in the past that gave him some trust issues. Karkat had finally come around, though. “Alright. I’m fine with that, then. I have to pick out the movie, though.”

“Cool.” Dave stood on up. “Lead the way so we can get this thing started.”

Even though Karkat seemed to not trust the situation at all, he did lead the way, carrying this heavy ass box all the way. When they got into his side of the place, Dave made sure to take a look around while Karkat was putting the box up. It was definitely decorated different from Dave’s place, that’s for damn sure. The white drywall and blankness was swapped out for a fresh coat of grey paint, posters Dave couldn’t read, and just plain weird shit. Dave had recognized the couch in his place as a normal couch, nothing weird about it, but this one seemed to have holes with green stuff in it just, built in? Gross. Also, seriously, these posters. What was he supposed to be getting from all of these? He thought his posters were bad but it turns out there was a new, ascended level of graphic design terribleness that one could reach, if he’d only try. Who puts text walls on a poster? They’re supposed to be simple and aesthetically pleasing, not the first page of the designers novel or whatever. There was plenty of other weirdly designed shit Dave could talk about, but he was just not willing to get into right now because alien tech was honestly so weird, bro. He had to  _ sort of _ deal with it at work, Dave was pretty sure the tablet he used was organic and equally as gross as everything in here, but he usually was able to put it out of mind. Here though, everything was so front and center, Dave didn’t have a choice to ignore it.

It made him a little uncomfortable.

Luckily, the couch didn’t audibly squish or anything when he sat down, so that was a plus, he guessed. Normal couches don’t really have that problem, but Dave digressed. He was in a brave new world, clearly. Karkat was bent over digging through some DVD case when Dave looked back at him to talk. “So, uh. Do you already got something in mind? What type of movies are you into, anyway? You never told me what was in those boxes.”

Karkat looked back, looking conflicted for just a second. Soon enough, though he decided to just bite the bullet. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh or anything. I was like, 6 when I got all these.” He stood up as he spoke, turning to face Dave.

Dave was pretty sure he was talking in sweeps, so that was like. Uh. Okay, turns out Dave hadn’t gotten any better at that conversion. He thought after working and living around trolls for a little while he would get used to it, but it just turned out a few days wasn’t enough to pick that up. It was a older than six, though, he knew that. Maybe double? Who knows. “Sure, yeah. Not promising I won’t chortle though. I might have a good snicker about it.”

The joke didn’t go over well with Karkat, who had a moment of looking pissed before he took a second and breathed, calming himself down. “They’re all rom coms I used to like.”

If ever there was a promise that was hard to keep, this is certainly one of them. Dave wasn’t a strong enough man to uphold his end of the bargain. He chortled a little. I mean, come on! He just admitted to liking chick flicks! If your boy walked into the room and said hey, let’s all watch Miss Congeniality, you would chortle a little too! You wouldn’t mean anything by it, but come on, it’s your boy you’re talking about. You can hit them with a playful chortle now and again. It’s healthy, even, the natural exchange when one of their lamer interests that aren’t being chill is brought up. I mean, unless you’re blissfully unaware of how lame chick flicks are, in which case, how did you even get this far? Seeing a skateboarder once in your life should’ve put you into full anaphylactic shock. It must be sad, sad existence, not having a natural cool compass like Dave did. “All of them? All of them are chick flicks?”

Karkat looked exasperated. “Okay, yeah, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. Everyone reacts like this, at this point it’s just played out and dumb. Yes, they’re all rom coms in there. Yes, I watch them regularly. Yes, they’re my favorite genre of movie. Answer me this, Strider: have you ever actually watched a romantic comedy? Or do you just hate of them because when you hear the name ‘chick flick’ your fucking peanut of a pan short circuits and goes HURR DURR GIORLS HAHA!! It’s pathetic! You all just take your meager positions at the shitting post, dumping your waste all over these things without even knowing why you’re doing it. Explain to me why you hate rom coms. Break it down for my simple, simple self, because apparently I’m too much of a fucking incompetent piss stain on the world to get it! Fuck you.”

Oh my god he’s pissed and its funny. Dave couldn’t stop cracking up. A grin made his way onto his lips. This guy. “Holy shit, bro, I apologize, I didn’t realize this was your passion. I just assumed it was just a movie genre, not a livelihood. I’m so, so sorry I insulted them. Hell, I’ll watch one if you’d behest upon me the honor of putting it on.” This dude never gets old.

“Oh, so you’re going to stop giggling like a wiggler for five seconds so we can actually watch something?? Thank god! it’s a miracle! The wonders never fucking cease.” He stomped over to the DVD player and put something in. Dave didn’t know what it was; usually, he would have used the power of peeking at the box, but he was busy containing big ass belly laughs so they could actually get through this movie.

Karkat plopped down next to him a few moments later, still fuming once the movie started to come up. The first thing Dave did notice was that it was in Alternian. The entire menu was unreadable to Dave, and all the characters were trolls. Did Karkat miss the part where he asked about Human movies?

“Now,” the troll started, wading through the menus and selecting English subtitles for Dave. How courteous. “I’m playing this because I’m assuming you’re basing your bullshit off of human romcoms, which suck by comparison. There is an issue though-- human romance is inherently terrible and oversimplified. It fucks up all of your classics because they lose this measure of intricacy. Really, it’s goddamn incredible you managed to put two and two together and develop a culture at all with this terrible “monogamy” system. It should’ve fallen apart way before we ever got here. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to actually pick up on any of those intricacies because humans are notoriously awful at picking up even the most obvious of quadrental tension, so I’m going to break down the movie as we go along just to  _ make sure _ you get it and then, with any luck, you’ll finally realize what’s so good about these things.”

Dave just groaned. “Aw, fuck, dude, can’t we just watch the movie like normal people? Who actually cares if I ‘fully understand’ it or anything? I don’t think anyone fully understands Mulholland Drive and David Lynch fans will castrate themselves for that thing.”

“Hap hap hap!” Karkat spat, cutting Dave off. “You  _ asked _ for this. Remember that. You  _ asked _ to come over and watch movies with me. We’re going to do this my way.’’ With that, he started the movie.

At first, it was weird. There were some part of Alternian society Dave didn’t really understand, so it was hard to watch a movie that came out of it and just pick everything up right away. Like, was all the gorey murder really that necessary? It’s hard to sympathize with the main characters when they brutally killed some people with chainsaws at the beginning of the movie. Dave asked Karkat about it and he said it was true to life, though, so Dave guessed it was okay? He also said they got more tolerant over the course of the movie, but there was another murder scene at the end, so Dave kind of doubted that somehow. Really, Dave didn’t care for the movie itself that much though. It was alright? Having some of the quadrant interplay explained to him did make it a little better, he guessed, but it was all just a really weird mix of Adam Sandler flicks and gore, not really what Dave was into. What made the entire experience worthwhile was the explanations Karkat was giving out. He was just so into it, man. Listening to someone break down relationships and complex bullshit is normally tiresome and really hard to listen to, but dude, it’s hard not to pay attention to someone when they’re so invested in something like this. Every scene Karkat would have something to rattle off about, something that he decided needed to be explained, and it was all delivered with such love. It was like listening to that one podcast where you don’t really care about whatever they’re talking about, but it was just so cool to listen to them talk about it that you didn’t care. At some points of the movie, Dave wouldn’t even bother looking at the screen, he was just sucked into Karkat’s talking. It was  _ fun _ , seriously. Who could’ve expected that shit, right?

By the time the movie was wrapping up, it was getting late and Dave was faced with a serious dilemma. Dave did have to get up early to go back to the meat grinder that was work, but there was just something calling him to another movie. Or, well. He just wanted to listen to Karkat basically talk about another movie for an hour and however many minutes. “Okay, okay,” Dave started, looking back over at Karkat. “I think I’m starting to get it, but I might need another demonstration, o’ holy one. You mind if we watch another one?”

Karkat looked pleasantly surprised. “Yeah, sure” And he got up to grab another one of his Alternian rom coms.

And they watched it.

And it was great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, oh my god, I'm so sorry this is late. Normal updating will resume Tuesday. As an apology, though, I extended this one by a few pages, so this thing is really extra long.


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